Gypsy
by Kureeji
Summary: He spoke and she heard his soft murmur. She began pulling at his waistband. The fluttering of her fingers was making him think only of her taste, her eyes and lips, and the two of them at the edge of the planet, the end of the world, the last day on earth
1. The Gypsy

Hi, this is your ancient friend Kuree. Ive been writing here on since February of 2001. "Gypsy" is the only story that I am revisiting and finishing. I think there is a lot of room for character development and a fun story here. I hope you enjoy it and if you have time, re-read the chapters, as I am posting up different versions. Thank you for your patience, and please review me on anything that seems far fetched, or unbelievable, etc etc.

The ship lurched forward as it tended to do in the outer reaches of space, when the very nothing-ness of the universe seemed to push against the walls of Pan's battered ship, The Gypsy. She jerked awake, casting a weary eye towards the control center window. Vast blackness stretched across the glass, sprinkled by billions upon billions of streaming stars.

She picked one out, among the trillions.

'Hey motherfucking star I see tonight. How about a wish? Get me somewhere. I don't even care where. Just get me somewhere.'

She propped her buckled black boots onto the dashboard, carefully avoiding buttons on the control panel. Half-lidded, she continued to gaze at the sparkling balls of gas that had once seemed so amazing to her. She was becoming cynical at the prospect of floating through the reaches of space alone for another month.

Her ship was her home. Earth was a fading memory...pictures played in her head that she cared not to remember. Things had changed. People were dead, other separated...the world was not the cotton candy pink she had envisioned as a child. She hadn't even seen the Earth in 7 years…7 years of change and growth.

Her grandfather had been gone for ages...her parents were divorced, although her mother was dead now. She had felt her ki slip off into the oblivion about 2 years ago. At the time she had been unable to even grieve her mother's passing, and now it was a sore subject, that even in her alone time she tried not to think about.

She was sure that Bulma and Vegeta were divorced, although they probably weren't even legally, in human terms, married to begin with. In fact, Vegeta had taken off when she was about 16, right off into the vastness of space. It almost seemed too typical for the old bastard. He had trained her some, and she had an odd affection for him. He had always pushed her one step further than her father ever would, and she never held back. Pan had no delusions and knew he would kick her ass if she didn't give her best. She respected him, but the one she had loved was Trunks.

She had loved him so long that at times she could remember nothing else. The wounds she got from fighting had been wrapped by his hands when she was a teenager, and the scrapes on her knees were kissed by his lips when she was a child. He had been the hero on the back of the cereal box to her, and it was almost surreal the way she had adored him.

She had watched him, silent through the years. She had watched through the long spikes of black hair that she hadn't really cut in 4 or 5 years, 'cuz that's the way 'he' liked it best. Even when he told her he loved her and she was the best friend he'd ever had, she just watched. Breaking. With a sneer directed to her former self, she cursed her past weaknesses and then picked up a battered sketchbook from the floor.

Pages upon pages of images, people, star maps, alien anatomy, and the scenes from hundreds of planets filled it. All the people she ever met along her journeys were sketched in this book. She drew them so she wouldn't forget. Anything she found she took note of...

She sighed and leaned back into her pilot chair. She fiddled with her black suit, eyes floating over the many patches and medals...gifts, from the rulers of planets. At 25 she was currently the youngest freelance fighter in space, and certainly among a handful of female ones. She made her money winning universal competitions, and the occasional assassination. She had fought in many, many wars, even the 4 Year War of Acantha. She was known by the graceful and deadly way in which she fought, and the name they called her by was Saiyajin. In space, she had no need for her human lineage. She was a Saiyajin.

She wore the traditional battle gear of a Saiyajin female, before Frieza had taken control of their race. It was an original battle suit; she had stolen it from a private collector who had made a large profit after the destruction of Vegetasei. It protected her like armor, except without the weight. It was constructed out of the leather-like hide of an animal now extinct, which had only lived on Vegetasei. It was jet black with the red emblem of the house of Vegetasei blazoned on the top. Someone important had once worn this suit. It was her pride, her history. Anyone who managed to make a mark on it, died.

A high-pitched noise startled Pan out of her musing. She immediately sat up straight and swiveled her chair toward the massive communications panel. "Computer, on screen." She commanded, and an image bounced up, filling the entire ship window.

"Well fuck, yer a sight, Saiyajin." The sharp toothed grin of a slightly humanoid figure appeared on the communications window. Pan's face immediately spread into a smirk.

"Anathea, how did you fix onto my signal?" Pan asked her companion in crime, an Acanthian female. She had been under Pan's command during the War Of Acantha, and had remained friends. She owned a port in the Western region, and whenever she was in the neighborhood, Pan stopped by for a drink and to switch a few battle stories, old and new.

"I've been keeping track a you since you left that Boron spaceport. News was all over town when you showed up." Anathea grinned another toothy grin. Her eHerAcanthian accent was crazy, reminding Pan of a half British, half Spanish sound, if you could imagine such a thing.

Pan grimaced. She liked to keep a low profile for the most part. After all, old allies to Frieza were out there, many of who still held grudges against Saiyajin, and many who just had grudges against her.

"Yeah, I fuckin' know, I had to pick up some parts and that's the only place that was convenient to get them. I had a whole pack of Naiden hunters tracking me. Stupid pigs."

Anathea chuckled.

"You know, Saiyajin, could be because, oh, i dont know, that little "fling" you had with their Prince a few months ago." Anathea said sarcastically, bringing up one of Pan's escapades.

Pan turned red and growled. "What can I say, he threw himself at me. You can't rape the willing." She lazily ran her hands through her hair. None of it was past ear length. She never stayed long with one man. Not that she was a whore or anything, she just hadn't yet found what she wanted in a permanent mate. She always felt disconnected from them, and then left, off to another journey. "So why call me now?" Pan asked, propping her face up with her hand.

Anathea twitched her dog-like ears lazily. She had a face more human than wolf, and a set of strikingly blue eyes. "There have been rumors..." Anathea started. "Seems people have been reporting another Saiyajin lurking abut the galaxy."

Pan lifted an eyebrow with semi-interest. The Acanthian people weren't a race to gossip for the hell of it. They had an extreme amount of honor and loyalty when it came to the protection of their own kind and their friends. So, while Pan may have had rank over Anathea in the War, Anathea was more like a big sister to Pan, even though she participated more than once as her partner in crime.

"Male or female?" Pan asked. Anathea shrugged her blue eyebrows. "I dont know. Methrail, my brother told me in Acanthian. We have no gender words..."

Pan was fluent in quite a few of the major languages of the Universe, including Acanthian, which she had learned during the War. She had even learned a good amount of Saiyajin by an elderly Erinyes woman. Her race had a very long lifespan, and when Pan had met her she was going on 400. Unfortunately, her race didn't survive the wrath of Frieza. The elder had learned Saiyajin when she had been about 20 years old and worked on Vegetasei as a bondservant...380 years ago. As a result, Pan had learned a form of Saiyajin that was poetic, more refined. She had learned the flowing Saiyajin of the court women and the royalty of Vegetasei...

"...you listening to me?" The rough voice of Anathea cut through Pan's musings. She shook her head and sat up straighter. "Uh, sorry Ana...just thinking..."

Anathea sighed and relayed her message again. "I've got to go, but where are you planning to be within the next couple of days?"

Pan looked at her quizzically. "Shit, I dont know. My engines are pissing out on me, and my Nav system is pretending to be all amnesiac. Im just drifting...I dont even know where the fuck I am, all these star formations look odd to me." She bit her lip, pride a little sinking to have to admit these things. Usually she was very intune with her ship. It was made out of bio-mechanical parts from all the systems of the galaxy...parts of her ship were alive, and more ancient than she would probably grasp. After all, she sailed the winds of the galaxy with the blessings of many races, and their ancestors. Spirits lived in the walls of her ship.

Anathea shook her head. Her people had ordinary bolt and screw ships, simply engine, metal, nothing else. She found these so called "spirit- ships" rather annoying and felt Pan shouldn't place so much trust in the ancients of the Universe. 'They are dead.' she though, 'How lucky could they be?'

Anathea tapped rapidly on her ship's main control."I've got a lock on you, your near the 34th sector in the Eastern region...What are you doing near Vegetasei?" Her eyebrows lifted.

"What?" Pan asked.

"You are about a day's travel away from the ruins of Vegetasei. Damn, hahaha. You're basically in a dead zone." Anathea stated. "Half of those planets aren't even inhabited now..."

Pan cursed in some random language beneath her breath. What if her engines were to fail permanently? She did of course have backup power but it would only get her so far. Lately her ship had been acting crazy, seemingly with a mind of it's own, which was a vast understatement, Pan knew. It DID have a mind of its own. It was like it was taking her where IT wanted her to go. As soon as her hormones changed, so did the ships. It was like living with another female. Pan and her ship were very much in sync with each other. Pan found it funny that if there were any problems on her eclectic ship, it was from the parts that were strictly mechanical, with no living components.

"How in the hell did you get out there? Where were you headed? It seems very unlikely you would get out there by chance..." Anathea said slowly, daring Pan to deny it.

Pan, looking steadily at her replied "I don't know where I was going. I told the computer to set a course and I entered about 50 planets to choose from, randomly." She shrugged. "I only put Vegetasei in there for the hell of it..." Pan didn't mention she had also entered Earth as a possible choice. Earth was like her open wound...it festered when she chose to remember it. 'Stupid ship!' she said in her head, and imagined the ship puffing out like a cat with indignation. 'You're doing this shit on purpose!'

Anathea looked at her skeptically, and rubbed a belly that Pan hadn't even noticed before.

"Jesus Christ Ana, are you pregnant?" Pan asked, voice almost squeaking as she looked at her semi swollen belly.

Anathea turned red and clearly avoided the subject. Pan wasn't sure how that had happened but it amused her none the less.

Ana would not be swayed into talking. "I told you I have to go!" Her old friend went on, "We will talk later okay? I am keeping track of you. Should your ship fail I have people on watch to come get you. 'Hma se garr, Saiyajin." She said a traditional go in peace farewell of her people, the screen flickered, and then Pan was once again alone in space. Save her neurotic ship.

Pan yawned, thinking mildly on the gossip over the drifting Saiyajin. Briefly she toyed with the thought that the other Saiyajin could be Vegeta, the old bastard himself, but knew it wasn't possible. Vegeta had disappeared on purpose and he wouldn't blow his silence come hell or high water. He was somewhere, she decided, undercover. Most likely training on his quest for power...even after all this time.

She did think that another Saiyajin could be out there...the universe was an unending place. With a pang of loneliness, something that she never usually felt, she wished she was with her old friends...old loves.

Feh. Love is meaningless.

She whispered to her ship, "Gypsy, please go to auto-pilot..." As an afterthought she added, "And no funny shit this time!" Then she curled into a ball in her huge control chair, tail wrapped around her thigh, and wished for dreams.

Like her wish earlier to the stars to take her somewhere, anywhere...

she should have been more specific.


	2. Past and Present

She crouched behind a remaining chunk of an Acanthian base, listening to the moaning around her. Some were shrill and painful, and others were a soft, pitiful whimpering, the sobs of a child or dying elder. Her troops lay on the field before her, butchered, but twistedly alive...

She listened, trying to block out any emotion. There was nothing she could do for them. They were victims of the Raiders. Most knew them as the very demons that crawled out of hell.

The raiders themselves were souless beings, remnants of a race that had died thousands of years ago. Their flesh hung from their mutated bodies, putrid and rotting, yet they still were alive, still growing. They feasted on the flesh and souls of whatever race they happened to come across. Flesh mutated their bodies into a stronger being, and souls kept them alive.

Once, she had seen the look of pure perverted pleasure on the face of a Raider as it sucked the newborn soul out of an infant Acanthian...a thousand bitter images played over and over in her mind, all of what destruction the demons had brought.

They marked their victims, if they chose to inhabit them, with a cross-mark between their eyebrows. They lived in the body of the victim as long as they pleased, and as a whole, the Raiders didnt have one single identifying feature except for the tatoo. Their race was an eclectic mix of thousands of different races, all bodies. The way they killed their victims was brutal, living inside their bodies for millenias, slowly slowly consuming tissue. It was known that a person of a race that only had a lifespan of perhaps a hundred years lived up to a thousand when inhabited by a Raider. Slowly dying...but never totally dead. If one was taken, there was no hope of survival.

This was where Pan was trapped, in the long War of Acanthia. A War that the whole universe knew about, and feared. No one would come within lightyears of this planet's sector for fear of the Raiders. Her ship was in a coma liked state. It did it's best to defend against the soul-sucking powers of the Raiders. They clung to the Gypsy day and night like moths to a light, stealing bits of its ancient soul. She had come here to speak with a trader 2 years ago, not knowing of the plague that brewed on the planet's surface. Now she was stuck here.

They felt her day and night, lapped at her Ki. She was always like a lighthouse and they tracked her incessantly, because of the bond she shared with her soul ship, The Gypsy.

"Amara ke sene!...Jo'ma...senere!" The strangled cry rose to Pan above the moaning. She sat up straight. It was a prayer for death, a prayer begging for death.

She crawled in the direction of the voice, avoiding pools of blood and severed limbs, not looking at the strings of intenstines and bashed heads. The cry was coming from an Acanthian female. She had no mark...she was alive. She wasn't one of them.

Pan gathered her up in her arms and placed her palm on her forehead. She was bleeding from her stomach...her womb...Pan grimaced, and pushed the bile back. Some Raider had ripped the child from her stomach and left her for dead. The raiders had a taste for infant flesh and the pure souls of babies.

The woman mumbled...called her an angel of 'Senenra'...she thought Pan was an angel from Hell, coming to take her. "Shhh..." Pan whispered softly to the woman who was delusional and in shock. Pan slowly sent ki through her body, resealing her flesh, rebuilding tissue. The woman's eyes folded shut, listening to the silent lullaby Pan sent her in her mind. Pan rarely used her mind to speak anymore...it made her vulnerable here. She lifted the woman easily and carried her back to her temporary hiding spot and listened to the sounds of death.  
What was worse than then the last cries of the fated Acanthians, was the silence. There was no sound after a raid, only the crackling of smothering ashes. The smoke made no sound as it drifted upward, and the cold, dead eyes of the people didn't need to. The silence nearly made her ears bleed.

She looked out onto the field of bodies and her hope died.

She was going to die out here.

------------------

Pan awoke with a start, trembling. She felt her ship murmur around her, as if sharing the pain of remembrance. The gypsy felt remorseful to her...almost guilty. Pan frowned. She never dreamed, and if she did, it had a very important purpose. Her ship sent her dreams to communicate with her at times.

She couldn't help but frown deeper with a spark of anger towards her ship. It knew she hated to think about the past. It knew she hated to think about the day she had saved that woman...the day she had saved Anathea. She hissed with annoyance at her ship and slung herself out of the chair. She was about to go take a shower to calm down, but she happened to glance at the ship window...

there were no stars.

Not one.

Just a red sky.

Pan's eyes widened and she dropped her hands to her side. How in the hell---how had she landed? Where had she landed? Slowly, with reality shifting all around her, she grasped what had taken place. Auto-pilot.

"You stupid ship! You cow! What have you done now??" She shrieked to The Gypsy, waving her arms about. The Gypsy answered with a puff of haughtiness that seemed to say "Figure it out, smartass." It pulled up a picture on the viewscreen:

The image was of a chunk of a planet...maybe one-eighth of what it had originally been. What was left of the planet was an impressive piece, immense and large enough to be stable.

Stats flashed up beside the image, the air was stable, and the planet was still in its original orbit. Apparently it was able to retain oxygen and an orbit due to its immensity. The computer picked up a large amount of metal in a certain area, and it indicated that there was probably some sort of structure on its surface. She reasoned it was probably a ruin now.

Pan squinted at this information for a few seconds, sleep making her drowsy. Then, she slowly peiced it together, a sick feeling lurching in her stomach. Vegetasei.

She stumbled, then composed herself a little. She went to the control desk and pulled up some diagrams concerning cases like this in other sectors, where most of a planet had been eradicated. Pan shook her head, and knew there was only one thing she could do. She opened the hatch.

With a puff of air the doors slowly opened, and warm air rushed in. Pan sucked in her breath at the sudden temperature change. It was thick air, almost tropical. She covered her mouth in shock and looked around. She slung her pack over her shoulder.

The land was covered in vegetation, and she appeared to have landed in the middle of a town square...a city. She was reminded of the Taj Mahal in India. The buildings were beautiful, built in white stone. In her mind, the Gypsy told her she was in the middle of the chunk of Vegetasei, and that the air only rose so far from the surface. The Gypsy went on to tell her that the old Palace was probably the structure it had detected earlier.

Pan stepped off her ship lightly, and inhaled the air. It was spicy with the smell trees and flowers that grew. She knew that at the edges of this planet the buildings were charred and destroyed, but where she was now was like a moment frozen in time. Altough plants and vines had grown up around the buildings, she saw that many of them were damn well preserved due to the techonology they were built with. Keypads had the houses locked airtight, and as she went up to what looked like a house and peered though a window, she saw armor and bowls and plates and a couch...still intact. As if the owner had merely left for a stroll...

Shop signs still displayed their wares, and she could read a few of them. Mostly armor places, bars, places to buy slaves, clothing, food...it was wild. It was eerie, Pan thought, to be walking in such a dead but somehow alive city. She walked down the streets of the royal city with an open mouth. No one had came and tried to claim this as their own...it was like a ghost town. The fact that no one fought over the ruins gave her the worst feeling yet.

She walked until she came to one of the largest buildings she had ever seen in her entire life. It was beautiful, even as it crumbled, time touching it slowly. She kneeled at the steps and almost wept. It felt like she was walking among the Gods, almost like this was a temple. Statues of Saiyajin surrounded it, arms poised, eternally protecting the Palace. Their stone eyes stared at her with the dignity of the people that had used to live here.

Gently, she headed up the steps, in awe of what was around her.

The halls of the Palace were open to the outside...she could see tapestries, crumbling from their hooks, but their old colors were still there, just faded. She went inside and gasped. More statues lined a massive throne room...and she realized that these were the likenesses of the kings of Vegetasei. She kneeled near one and read the name that was almost gone from the stone. 'King Vegeta, the 18th in the royal family of Vegeta, 756 to 872' She read and puzzled over it. She went back 18 statues and and saw that this King was the last of his house. HIs family had been the royal family of Vegirrn.

"Oh my god..." She whispered, looking back over the lines of statues and the way she had come in. They wrapped around the whole palace...thosands of them. This was the history of Vegetasei, told in stone, over centuries and centuries and centuries.

She ran up until the last statue and saw that his was Kind Vegeta the 23rd...She shrank back from the statue. It looked so much like Vegeta. "It's his father..." She thought to herself. All the carvings were of the Kings in their prime...She looked at the date beneath it. It had a starting date, but then only a dash, and no ending date to his reign. "God...!" She whispered again. He had been killed by Frieza, and none of his people had been left to finish his statue. 

She sank to the marble floor and put her fist to her heart in tribute to the fallen Saiyajin.

"Creeaaaaaaaak." The noise instantly brought Pan back to the present. She spun on her heels in the direction of the noise, and fell into a fighting stance. She saw a fleeting shadow out of the corner of her eye. Pan realized was not as alone as she thought in the deaded palace of Vegetasei.

"Show yourself!" She hissed in Saiyago, the words flowing out of her mouth easily. Her anger was ignited. "Show yourself, whatever flea that dares to walk upon the holy resting place of my people!" She growled deep in her throat, intensely angered at whatever was lurking behind the shadows, most likely stealing whatever was left from the palace.

A deep, booming chuckle bounced of the high walls and columns of the throne room. It was an almost evil laugh, one that chilled her to the core, one that was so haunting she could have sworn she had heard it before.

"Show yourself!" She screamed, even more so angered. She bared her teeth, and the hair on her tail stood on end. The defined muscles in her arms, back and stomach shown, tensed for whatever lurked in the shadows.

A body moved slowly out of the dark, accompanied by a purring male voice.

"He'sen manna gaurrd, Saiayjin che." It said, and Pan froze. "Ouji sa, pre ten kanen."  
'You know not of what you speak, impostor.' she translated from his smooth, dripping Saiyajin voice.

'To your king...  
show respect.'

Pan choked. She knew that voice. The man stepped out of the shadows and Pan's steps wavered. She sank to the floor.

"Vegeta?"


	3. Haunting

The figure faltered. Vegeta looked down at the woman, the Saiyajin female in front of him, and spoke so softly she barely heard him "Leave me, demon. Your tricks do not fool me." He stopped, eyes not leaving her, seemingly going into her very mind. "You are a mirage."

She stared at him in his wild and broken beauty: the black bags under eyes that gleamed with a pleading she didn't understand, a sort of crazed look...the burn marks and scars on his body. Even in his ragged state he seemed so regal...so much pride and dignity was bred into his skin the air nearly crackled with it. She sighed at her old mentor, her beloved friend's appearance. He didn't even know who she was. "Do you not know who I am, Vegeta?" She whispered carefully, not wanting to set him off.

He considered this question and considered the female. Usually the spirits that visited him didn't stay so long. And besides, this one smelled good.

"You smell...familiar." He looked at her quizzically and drew nearer to her, grabbing her face in his hand and turning it from side to side. She hissed slightly, insulted that he thought he could invade her space like that. He didn't stop, but quirked an eyebrow when he saw her uniform. "What are you? A mercenary?"

She frowned. "Im not some cheap hire-ling. I care not of money." She crossed her arms. "I am a warrior." She stated haughtily, still surprised her hadn't recognized her. She was sure him of all people would.

He gave her a look and sat back on his heels, shut his eyes and thought for a moment. She breathed softly, wondering if he was insane or if maybe she was still on her ship and this was all a dream. After a few seconds he opened his eyes, and they stared at her with an intensity she had never seen before.

He looked her up and down in a calculating way, his eyes noting ever scar, every muscle, every curve, and then last of all, her tail. His lips turned into the most feral smirk she had yet seen on his face. Seconds stretched on for hours. Then he locked his ivory irises onto her green ones.

"Little Panny-chan's all grown up." He said, voice almost purring, dripping with a tone he hadn't used in a long time. For a second she just stared right back at him, then she grinned a lazily smile, and laughed, not knowing what else to say. He continued to look at her, and then his eyes softened. His grin faded into a thin line and he said "You're...very different...little one." He looked remorseful and Pan wondered how long he had been out her, a king of his dead people. How long he had been away from Earth, she mused, away from his children, his old lover. How long he had been alone, with absolutely no one but the graves around him.

She stood very nervously.

He crouched beside her quietly. Had the Saiyajin Anathea warned her about been Vegeta? It seemed rather odd, because from the looks of things he had been alone on Vegetasei for quite some time. The events in her life lately had been so quizzical...she felt lost, like a really really tiny peice in a huge ass puzzle. She felt like she should have figured it out by now...

"You speak Saiyajin." Vegeta stated beside her, as if just realizing this. Pan was so startled she laughed again and sent him an odd look. "Yes...I learned it a long time ago."

"Did they send you to come get me?" He asked, a tiredness seeping into his voice. She turned her head to look at him. He had one arm draped over his propped up leg and was watching her intently.

"Vegeta, I haven't been on earth for 7 years." She said simply, returning his look and correctly assuming that he was referring to the people on earth. Her Saiya-go was sticky but she was able to convey the thought.

He raised an eyebrow and chuckled. "You ran away." His tone held some form of twisted respect.  
She shrugged. "I left."  
"Why?" He asked, with a simple motive of interest.  
"There was nothing there for me." She said, turning her head to the ceiling and noticing the murals and stair casing that adorned it.  
"You were in love with my son." A statement, not a question.  
She looked at him again, eyes void of much emotion. "I was."  
'What a perceptive old bastard.' She thought in her head. 'How the hell had he known that? Was I such a naive little brat that I was so utterly obvious?' She sniffed, annoyed at his perceptiveness.

He didn't say anything after that.

"How long have you been here, Vegeta-sama?" She asked softly, reading down a poem of history on the ceiling written in Saiyago.

Vegeta was quiet, considering.  
He answered "Around 8 years." He was staring out at the veranda, and the open fields past the palace. He humphed. "It is nothing." His brow seemed so hardened. "My ship was destroyed coming."

Pan could only watch him, and was without words.  
"Do you want to leave?" She asked.  
"Do you?" He returned, almost as if he was going back into 'Vegeta' mode and determining whether her questions were worthy enough.  
She stopped for a moment. She realized she didn't want to leave. "Not really..." She said. "There's no point...i dont have anywhere else to be."

He rolled his eyes, and Pan remembered Bulma doing that to him all the time. "Then perhaps you should ask yourself the point in staying here." He said, crossing his arms over his chest, still looking at the ceiling.

"You ass." Pan said, sitting up, mildly annoyed. "I can leave, then you could be alone with the shadows and ghosts of your people."  
He sat up as well, and grunted, obviously it nettled him to refer to this place like that. But he didn't tell her not to leave, nor did he tell her to stay. Odd.

"There is a reason you are here." He told her. "Go ahead and leave if you wish, but not before finding out why you found this place." He stood up, and she realized why at first he had looked a little different, besides he haggard appearance. He was wearing the clothes of a king.

Pan stood up as well, annoyance coming back. "What the shit are you talking about, Vegeta? Who died and made you Buddha?" She threw at him, and he grinned and bowed arrogantly.

"Here I AM God, I am King, I am the greatest philosopher on this entire planet." She paused at his speech and laughed, realizing he was playing with her.  
"In that case, I will have to stay. If you're the greatest, this place is doomed." A shadow fell over his eyes. "This place has already met it's fate." He said simply. She shrugged her shoulders. "I think it's far from dead." She said, looking at him.

He didn't answer.

-----------------

Vegeta walked silently, slinking through the moonlight. He was at the end of his nerves. This place was driving him mad. He could feel them along every square inch of the palace...they came out at night.

He stood in the graveyard of the kings and felt a chill run down his spine. He should not have come here, and he realized it two seconds too late. He could feel them all around him.

He turned slowly, and the hollow eyes of his ancestors stared at him.

"Shit."

------------

Vegeta began a mazelike tour of the palace.

"There aren't many rooms here." He said quietly, and then explained, "All of the officials lived out of the palace, in the city, and the servants quarters are in the back, not connected to the palace. Only my family lived here..." He trailed off, then punched a number into the keypad of a room. Seeing her wide-eyed look at the use of electricity, he said "The Palace runs off a power that I myself cannot explain...but it is the most untouched place on what is left of this planet."

He thought for a moment. "The reason it still works is a legend...it is said the spirits of the kings protect what is theirs...I would like to think that is what saved the Palace."

"The whole point was if there was ever an attack on the planet, that the palance and royal family should survive. There is a forcefield protecting us." He finished this little history, and Pan nodded, afraid to speak and disturb this mood the Ouji was in.

They entered the room and Pan sucked in her breath. It was laden in silks and finery. The dust was the only thing that betrayed its true age. Vegeta shifted beside her.

"It is late. I have already sparred for the day, but perhaps tomorrow I will have the pleasure of torturing you." He grinned sadistically and Pan had the urge to stick out her tongue at him. He watched her for a moment..."How different you have become..." He said chuckling, his black eyes smoldering with a strange look. He trailed off and Pan felt uncomfortable, unable to gauge the look in the depths of his black eyes.

She sent a message with her mind to the Gypsy, telling her thank you and that she should lock up and go into sleep mode. Then she crawled into the old bed.

Vegeta stood at her doorway and watched the rise of her stomach after sleep had claimed her. Cursing himself and whatever fate had brought her here, he walked off to his bedroom and did not sleep peacefully that night. He would have to tell her the secrets of the Palace eventually...

He just hoped her presence here was welcome.

-----------------------------------------

Staring up into the ink black sky, Goten sighed, weary and watchful of the forest around him. Something was not right. He could feel it in his very bones, and his tail twisted in restless patterns behind him. He broke out into a cold sweat but besides his tail, he didnt show any other outward sign of his inner suspicions...

It had woken him up, this feeling of unease. The shadows had taunted him, drawing him out of bed and into the forest of his country home. He was angry. He was so angry.

His face twisted into a bitter frown, wondering why he had been left alone to deal with these things? His mother was dead. Along with Krillin, Master Roshi, Yamcha and Tien.

He couldn't stop it! Something was stealing them away from him. It was like their life signs had simply ceased to exist, all in a few moments...yet he could still feel them...and the incredible empty feeling around the spot where their ki's used to be. Feeling for them was disturbing. They were almost there, but not quite. He couldn't understand. Their ki's hovered at his mind like they were alive, but they were paper thin, mirage-like, a mirror trick. He did not understand.

The people had began to notice it too. The news stations carried long lists of missing people, and there was hardly a street post, wall or shop window without a poster stating a loved one was missing. Especially children. Their numbers had started to drop slowy but surely about a month ago, the same time that other members of the Z gang had disappeared.

The remaining warriors, Gohan, Goten, Trunks and sometimes Bra, were at a loss. Something was happening but they had yet to see a foe.

Gohan grit his teeth in anguish, and wished Pan was with him. Panny always knew how to get out of trouble.

Then, shaking him out of his reveries, the peircing scream of his mate tore through the night air.


	4. It Is Time

UPDATE!!!

IT IS NOW 2007! I just wanted to let you guys know that I AM working on this story, and not to lose hope, if you care….

-----all the love in the world, kuree

Hey readers and reviewers. This one took me a longer time to write, ehh, just havent had much motivation lately, despite it being a really fun fic to write. Nevertheless, i hope you like reading it as much as i like writing it, and feel free (aka im begging you) to leave me a few comments, complaints, threats, payments, offers for sexual favors, or a good old fashioned review. Heehee.

Thanks everyone.  
---Kuree

P.S. If you dont understand something in this fic, remember it will likely be explained soon, or you should try to read between the lines a little, lol.

P.P.S. If you have any predictions, i would be tickled and happy to hear them.

P.P.P.S. I know I have spelling errors. And I dont care. Fight the man! Rebel against grammatical oppression!

It was in the middle of a kata that Pan felt it, a familiar pain in the middle of her chest. The grains of sand on the arena ground blurred and the sensation was was so startling and sharp that she stopped her 'dance' and clutched the spot between her breasts, hissing.

She would not lie to herself or even Vegeta in a few moments when he would ask her what ailed her, even if it took some coaxing to get it out of her. For the whole month that she had lived on Vegetasei there had been a overhanging feeling near her head, and sometimes a quick, pin prick of pain in her heart. Altough, it had never been such a physical manifestation, rather an emotional, mental one.

A gift she had, able to sense certain energies, including those of the spirits. The Gypsy had taught her how to connect with the subtle, timeless energies that wrapped around every molecule of the universe, and there was a part of her ever-aware of the ancient powers around her. She breathed them in and out and they overlapped her mind and soul a thousand-fold.

But this feeling wasn't a comforting one. It was sorrow and pain, fear and warning. She couldnt decipher what she was being told. At night her dreams had become cryptic and dark, laced with things she couldn't quite place... Voices and sounds whispered to her third eye, pleading with her, crying to her, and she didn't understand them. The timeless spirits of the Gypsy shuddered in her mind and Pan felt even more uneasy.

"What's wrong, little one?" Vegeta asked gruffly, stopping his sparring and using his pet name for her. He said it because it mildly irritated her, but Pan knew it was some sort of twisted, grudging acceptance of her, maybe even affection. Today he used it trying to gauge her mood. He watched her with his calculating onyx eyes, and Pan knew she couldnt hide much from him, even if she tried.

"Nothing." Pan said, the stressed veins in her hand slowly sinking back beneath her tan skin.

Vegeta quirked an eyebrow slowly, watching the sweat glint off her shoulders and the slow way she composed herself. "Don't lie." He said simply, wiping his large biceps with a towel and then slowly raising his eyes from her slightly trembling hand to her face.

She growled slightly but not one of anger, merely showing her uneasyness. She glanced nervously at her surrounding, eyes shifty.

Something clicked in Vegeta's head, just as a setting shadow ran the lengths of the large practice grounds they were in. The tone of his voice immediately shifted. He grunted slightly. "I think we should go inside."

Pan snapped to attention. Her face instantly turned to a frown and anger glittered in her eyes, green and fierce. "What? I am not some weak fool, it isnt even dark yet! I am in no pain." She flexed her arm to exaggerate her point. He sighed and rolled his eyes. She seemed to think he was ending their training early to compensate for her.

Exasperatedly he replied, "Child, never did i say you were weak. Can't you feel it? Have you not been listening at all?" He gestured wildly about him. "Have you let your human taint dull your instincts?" He added, the words coming out like a growl. He tugged the top of his black training suit off and Pan completely ignored the coarded, rippling ridges of his tanned flesh.

She didn't respond, just dropped her mouth into a pouty 'o'. Looking at him with suprise she stuttered, "I didn't know you could feel it too."

He began to look jumpy, and the setting darkness suddenly seemed a lot more threatening than usual to Pan. His eyes took on that haunted look she sometimes saw in them, the one that made her want to jump in and drown in his sorrow in his place.

"I could always feel them in this place...the spirits, my ancestors are...restless...even moreso now, at this time...look at the moon, for god's sake..." He mumbled while shifting his eyes around the compound, noting each shadow and how it seemed to...shudder with each breath. How the darkness seemed to tremble and...pulsate. As if it were...somehow alive.

Pan didn't know how to respond. She had always been aware of the energy around the palace, maybe on the whole planet, but she thought only she could feel it. She squinted at Vegeta's body, rebuking herself for forgetting the enigma wrapped underneath his calloused, case hardened skin. Of course it was a possibility he could sense the un-ease of the spirits. She began to feel extremely vulnerable. Acting like the force wasnt there had been a mild scapegoat to make her comfortable, but not there was no denying what was obviously all around them.

Even the mighty prince was nervous when acknowledging the presence of a possibly enemy that he couldnt physically beat the shit out of.

She shivered and Vegeta watched the tiny goosebumps rise on her arms. He grunted again. "Lets go back." She nodded and unconsciously stepped closer to Vegeta, and they flew in the direction of the palace.  
-----------------------------------------

Goten stood solemnly, the only figure for countless miles around the bleak landscape. The muscles in his back were taut and he stood without the natural grace he had inheirited from his father. His body was rigid, and his face was set into a mask of nothingness. If one would have looked close enough, they would have seen the darkness in his eyes that had once held light.

He dropped the flowers he had been gripping. They were roses. Their crimson petals fluttered downwards with no sound, along with their crushed counterparts, broken stems. The thorns had left indentations and gashes in Goten's hand, and he let little rivulets of blood run down his fingers.

He heard a sound behind him, but he didnt react, nor did he really care. He shut his eyes resolutely, wondering if some enemy was finally here to take him too?

"Goten...come home..." The soft whispering of Bra pleaded, her voice breaking with emotion as she grasping his large hand in both of her tiny ones. The man didn't say anything, but lacking the strength to hold it in anymore, crumpled to the ground with a hoarse sob. He was slowly breaking, and his blue haired mate didn't know what to do.

Goten thought over and over, his repeating sorrow, "I wasn't there...I wasn't fast enough...i wasnt there..."

Bra kneeled next to him and held his head to her neck, letting him weep for what was lost. She looked back at the thing that Goten had been staring at for such a long time. Her large blue eyes blinked in a fragile attempt to hold back familiar tears.

The grave stones stood solemnly next to other in a private cemetary, hidden from public view, on property owned by Capsule Corporation. Names were etched into their surfaces, names that haunted the girl named Bra and her husband, Goten. Names to people who should still be there.

The name that her mate had been staring at had been one they had both argued over for a long time. She had wanted "Bulma" while he had wanted "Chichi," but in the end, they had both agreed on "Chimari," a combination of the two.

"Son Chimari" was what the engraved letters read...the name of an infant girl who had been killed. Their baby girl.

Bra trembled even in her mate's embrace, and vowed that come hell or highwater, never would she lose another child to the demons that were slowly sucking the soul out of the earth.

Where was redemption? Where was the warriors that once protected this place? She hissed in anger and sadness combined, thinking momentarily of her old friend Pan, and then with an even bigger sorrow, thought of her father.

'Where are you, Daddy?' she asked in her head, screaming it out to the heavens and whatever other astral planes that anyone could hear her plea. 'And when will you come to save us all?'

She choked back a sob, knowing both were probably as dead as the stones in front of her.

The earth was fading, dying, withering away...

The earth was doomed.

---------------------------  
Anathea slammed her clawed hand against the ships' control panel. The Gypsy was blocking her attempts to locate Pan. "Shit." She cursed in her native tongue, becoming increasingly anxious about Pan's wellbeing. At first she had let Pan have her space, she left her alone for a month. She had even pushed off her own dreams and the bad feelings that set above her shoulders. But it was getting out of control. 

The child inside of her felt its mother's unease and Anathea calmed herself slightly for the child's sake. She cursed the Gypsy's stubborn-assed nature and wondered why in the hell the ship was blocking her.

Her hands unclenched themselves from on top of the panel.

Unless the Gypsy wasnt blocking her at all, but was unable to respond.

She shivered despite her thick blue fur, and curled her tail around herself for comfort.   
-------------------------------------

'it is time.' they said unspeakingly, the air around them throbbing with ageless, undying power. The shadows turned and ran across the backs of the trees, and the trees shivered, letting them slide through. Water stood still for only once in his infinite history, his streams frozen in place not because of Frost.

'it is time.' they all agreed, and they stepped out from the darkness and descended upon the plane of the living.

---------------------------------------  
"Why now, Vegeta?" Pan whispered, balls of controlled ki sparkling around them the to light the place. She was gathering her bed things into a haphazard pile.

They were in the high walled throne room, a partially open area with white pillars surrounding it. They both tended to sleep here in the heat of the summer months on Vegetasei, instead of their own rooms which were enclosed and weren't air conditioned. The air was always thick and tropical, but the slight breeze that slide in through the pillars was pleasant and kept them a bit cooler.

Pan slide closer to Vegeta on the marble floor, dragging her blankets with her. She stripped off her thick leather top and pants, and was bare except for her white underthings. Vegeta didnt even flinch; it wasnt like he had never seen her fight like that before. He wore only the bottoms of his black training suit and he was hunched over, wrapping a wound on his hand.

His eyes slide to her lithe form, flickering in the light of the ki. "The moon, i suppose." He answered lazily. "You can feel it in yourself, don't act so naive, woman." He cut the bandage on his hand with his canine teeth and began to try to doctor long gashes on his back. He looked a bit clumsy, trying to twist to reach a place between his shoulder blades.

She watched him stumble but didnt do anything, a bit of heat in her cheeks and neck. "How would you know what I feel, Vegeta?" She asked a little caustically, laying on her side and letting her eyes slide closed in an attempt to look non-chalant about it.

He chuckled darkly. "Your body screams at me. It is wanting you to bear brats." He said, still scratching at his back. "You are far past the capable age. When was the last time you mated?" He asked, giving up on his back and turning to a nasty looking welt that looped around his leg.

Pan was jolted out of her act, "Uggh!" She shrieked exasperatedly, breaking their calm atmosphere. "First of all it is none of your concern, Ouji, and second of all, "mated"?!" She waved the arm that wasn't propping up her chin wildly to exaggerate her point.

Vegeta laughed, his dark eyes shining with chagrin. "Well, Princess..." He dragged out the word with much sarcasm. "If it's such an embarassing subject for you---"

"It isn't." Pan cut in sharply, nose turned upwards.

Vegeta continued, as if never interrupted "---then calm your hormones. And would you rather me say 'made love' or something?" He asked, mocking the sickeningly sweet human term. He said it in english, and for a second Pan's mind didnt register the word because she hadnt heard the earth language in such a long time. Like honey, her mind slowly grasped the word.

"No." She said stonily. "I would rather you say 'fucked'." She said the word in english, as she didnt know the Saiya-go for it, or even if there was an exact equivalent.

Vegeta almost looked suprised. "Fine, the last time you 'fucked'." He purred the word out to her, and it sounded alien in his thick accented voice. He looked at her with his evil grin. "You look so sweet when you speak naughty Earth words."

Pan chuckled at his sarcasm and then smacked him on his back. He winced, breaking his own laughter, and she remembered the wounds she had given him that day while sparring. He had seemed a little distracted while he fought (which was very odd for him) She had slammed a ball of crackling ki into his bare back.

Feeling guilty, she scooted up behind him on her knees, one leg on each side of his back, and began to rub an medicinal oil into his flesh. He had been trying to do the same earlier but could not properly reach. He grunted in allowance as she applied the remedy that came from a certain fruit that grew on Vegetasei. It was a sweet fruit that was also edible.  
"And anyway." She said, continuing their conversation from before, "My hormones are very much in check." She kneaded the medical oil into a gash near his neck, and he leaned into her, from what she assumed was comfort from her administrations.

They sat in silence for a few minutes while she kneaded his back. His posture because slouched and relaxed, and his body heat was pleasant to her own. She began to get quite relaxed herself, and her eyelids began to seem heavier.

She felt him grin abruptly, and then he purred, "If your hormones are so in check..." He paused, "Then why can I feel your nipples pressing so energetically into my back?" He grinned his lazy grin, and Pan flushed, suddenly more aware of his body thcn she had been before. Then she changed tactics a little, tired of seeming like some clumsy child in front of him.

She pressed her chest against him, and she heard a barely-audible intake of breath, maybe from the combination of his piercing injuries and her body. Pain with a bit of pleasure. "Perhaps I wanted you to feel them." She murmured, a feral grin overtaking her features.

He leaned back until he was comfortably resting into her breasts and said, "Well then, I wont take away your hopes and dreams, or the sick pleasure you get from blatantly trying to seduce me."

Pan smacked him in his face and said "You ass!!" She was about get up quickly and let him fall backwards, but he grabbed her wrist and tugged her into his lap. His chuckling echoed off the high ceilings. She struggled but soon relented; he had always been stronger than her, but then again, she was more flexible and quick than he was.

"You ass monkey, let me the hell up." She said, smacking her hands against his chest with no intent of real harm. She was straddling him, legs around his waist. He let go of her wrists and held his hands away from her. "Leave if you wish." His dark eyes looked into hers earnestly, issuing a challenge. "Good!" Pan said, and she made like she was getting up off of him, keeping her eyes leveled defiantly with his all the way.

She rose up from him stoically, and he 'humphed' and turned his eyes away from hers, flickering with some dark emotion Pan couldnt quite catch.

Then, at the last second she pounced on him, waiting just long enough before plunging her mouth into his to feel his carnal grin against her bottom lip.

She let go all of her coherent thought, and he breathed her in, petty paranoias, lack of inhibitions, strength and weaknesses, all in all, and she felt herself almost slipping...

Then without warning, shadow blanketed them both, the air froze, and nothing on Vegetasei dared breath. A second passed like a millennia. Pan, almost afraid to turn around, looked into Vegeta's eyes.

The prince returned her gaze and said simply:  
"They are here."

--------------------------------  
I just wanted to thank the 10 people that have reviewed so far. Your support means so much to me.---Kuree


	5. The Gift

So….ive been thinking a lot about this story lately. A lot more development with Pan and Vegeta is coming soon. At this point they have been on Vegetasei for about 3 or 4 months, so bear with me…the pieces are coming closer to meeting ends.

-----Kuree

The light of one hundred suns blistered Pan and Vegeta's face for one split second. Pan took a step back, and she noticed Vegeta's arm hovering in front of her as if to protect her.

The intensity of the light died down, but kept a glow. 'Ive never seen light like this before,' Pan thought dazedly, remarking upon how clear and white this light was, without a tint of yellow. Vegeta was tense, and she could feel the hum of his energy just waiting to be called out if necessary.

Out of the middle of the mass of light came a flicker…then two more, and a shape started to materialize. A human shape. The shapes of 9 other forms came together, and these beings were robed. Vegeta scanned their figures and saw that their eyes held no pupils, but a blank white space. Their robes moved about them easily, though the air was still and no wind touched Pan's or Vegeta's skin.

Pan moved closer to Vegeta and he put his arm around her, uncharacteristically, and Pan bit back the impulse to hide any further. She was a warrior, yet she had the strangest feeling about her, as if something was about to change. She knew she was acting like a child but at the same time she couldn't force herself to confront this thing head on.

Then, the sound of a computer turning on, or an electronic melody running backwards cascaded from the center of the visitors, but the mouths on their faces didn't move. It was as if their entirety vibrated.

"Son Pan."

Ten voices blended seamlessly to project that one name.

A booming echo was all that Pan registered, and the heat rushed to her ears. She was embarrassed to hear her own name from these otherworldly beings.

"Do not be alarmed, Son Pan." The beings emitted a strange noise and it was as if they were amused. Their Saiyago was so flawless. It was old poetry being recited by a respected professor, it was a harmony that was unlike anything she had ever heard, or would ever hear again in her life. "For millennia have passed as we have waited, and in the blink of an eye we have watched you live your life. We have come, Son Pan, not to hurt you, but to give you the greatest gift of your people, the sum of their grace and beauty, and the strength to prevail against the odds that you will soon face."

Their energy pulsated, and Pan felt like she might piss herself. She felt Vegeta's fingers stirring at her side.

"Who are you, and what odds do you speak of?" Vegeta stepped forward, ready to listen.

There was silence and only the hum of their strange energy at first.

"King Vegeta. The last of us. The strongest. May you always feel the beat of your homeland deep within your heart. We are the semblance of the kings of the past. We are the remainder of the souls of one hundred thousand kings that reigned with your likeness. The very blood that beats through your body came first from our physical bodies. We are the power emanating around this palace, that which saved Vegetasai, in hopes that one day Lah Mata Lai would come home one last time." A pause. Pan felt her knees go week, as if she was seeing god. Vegeta looked at her, and she returned his gaze. She tried to understand the meaning of their phrase, but it was so slippery that the only part she could grasp was the root of the word for the number two. Vegeta understood.

"The fated two?" He asked. He began to chuckle sarcastically. "Surely you don't mean this brat here, and I." His voice intoned, his eyebrow sitting high on his forehead. His mind raced, and he tried to make sense of what they were saying.

"This woman.

THIS WOMAN."

Their 'voice' hummed ferociously.

"This woman, born of blood and fate, was sent to you, King, The last Saiyajin female, and the only one strong enough to bear the burden that will be placed upon her back. And you King, by fate, are marked to help her bear it." They paused.

"I don't understand…" Pan said softly, like a child again. She was very humbled at this, but was truly afraid for the first time in years.

"Don't be afraid woman, for you were born of fate to carry a gift, a weapon, the knowledge to set the universe straight. Your blood carries one taint, human blood. It is so because without your bond with humanity and the earth, you would not care to fight the fight, to bathe the earth in peace rather that blood. Your earth is in peril."

The beings paused, and began again. "You were in Acantha when you first saw of the terror known as the raiders."

Pans blood ran cold, and as if from a dream Vegeta felt that panic in her heart. She took a step forward.

"The raiders…have come to earth?" She asked, her fists clenched. "I don't understand…we..." She looked down in shame. "Surely beings like you know the sacrifices we made to end the raiders." She didn't speak of her methods.

Again she felt that strange pulse, the hum of energy before they spoke.

"The raiders existed long before the Acanthians, before the humans, before most races were sludge at the bottom of oceans. At the beginning of time itself, there was one race and only one that the raiders feared, at that was the Saiyajin."

Vegeta snorted sarcastically. "Even the Saiyajin aren't that old. We came to this planet, and stole the technology from the race that was here first."

The beings seemed to laugh, just as sarcastically as Vegeta. "This planet was not the first planet to be called home to the Saiyajin. This is the second homecoming of the Saiyajin, this planet that you stand on."

"There is an older home to the Saiyajin?" Pan asked, the first time in the conversation feeling inquisitive not out of shock or fear. "What is the location of this planet?"

This time Pan was sure that the visitors were laughing. "We will give you this information, but it will lay sleeping inside your ship. That journey is for another day, and you must not become distracted." They took a more sober tone.

"You must understand that this is our last chance. Vegeta was in tune with us, and has been waiting, gaining strength and solace here in this place. Everything is written. Nothing is chance." One of the beings shifted their head and looked directly at Pan. "Out of darkness and space, eons of time and countless pains and sorrows, you have been brought here, both of you, to receive the promise of your people."

The spirits reverberated. "We haven't much time. After we go, this shell of Vegetasei will fall in one month. You have much learning to do in this space of time, so take heed and train fiercely. Are you ready, Son Pan, to receive this gift?"

Vegeta stepped forward again. "Why not give me this power? I am more powerful than this woman, and I can carry this burden. I am the last king. Is it not fitting?"

The spirits hummed. "This gift can only be carried by a female. It is only effective if carried by a woman. This woman can pass this gift to you, when the time is right. Step forward, Son Pan."

Pan began to walk on the shakiest legs she had ever had. The information was just rushing inside her, the earth, the raiders, a new power…she was overwhelmed. She looked back at Vegeta, but he had an unreadable look on his face. She turned to face the timeless beings, and knelt.

She gasped. Almost instantly the light that had once blinded her began to seep into her body. She shook, almost as if being electrocuted. The intensity was almost pain, and she could feel her ki changing, absorbing this new…gift. The tips of her fingers began to glow, and her body felt like it was going to burst. She grit her teeth. She felt Vegeta becoming anxious, and she moaned in agony now, as the light blistered her insides. Just as she was about to scream, in one last burst of energy the transfer stopped, and she sunk to the floor.

The glow around the visitors began to fade. At the edges of her consciousness, she heard them ask Vegeta to step forward. He kneeled and bowed his head, but before she could hear the what the spirits were going to say, her eyes closed and she sunk into a world of darkness, exhausted and overwhelmed.


	6. The Challenge

I really need some feedback on this chapter. The ideas were experimental and came to me one day, and I would love to know what you think. Thanks guys

---------------Kuree

Vegeta stood patiently, listening to the beings that had once tortured him in his years of loneliness talk to Pan. Eight years he had been here alone, not understanding why. It was a relentless pull, driving him mad. He had been visited by spirits, but these were separate entities, souls that had once been people. Nothing as cumulative as the power that radiated off of this collective of visitors.

He watched Pan with a keen eye. She was like a pale blossom, quivering with newness. She was in abandon, confused, too young to know the secrets he knew about his people, the stories that had been told to him since he was a child.

'This woman.' They had called her, as if she was chosen. Picked. He was Vegeta, totally self dependant, yet the great king accepted that he was involved in a planned event that he was just now beginning to see the outline of. 'By fate and blood, she was sent to you, oh king…' She had taken him like a storm in the few months that they had trained on Vegetasei. Sometimes neither spoke to each other for days on end. Sometimes he cursed her, spat at her, and beat her senseless while they sparred. Sometimes she wound him up and then left him abruptly with no outlet to release his frustrations with her.

She was a graceful warrior and it was becoming clearer everyday that her potential would exceed anyone's expectations. She could go Super Saiyajin, but Vegeta thought deep within himself that the brat was capable to ascending to level two if he continued to push her.

"Vegeta." The hum of the spirits energy was demanding his attention.

He shut his eyes now, shoving her out of his mind and stepping forward to listen to the spirit beings.

------------------

Pan awoke with a throbbing headache. She felt Vegeta's presence nearby, and it calmed her. She realized that it was night time, and the transfer of energy had left her in an unconscious state for a few hours. She stretched and moved to stretch her leg, when she felt unfamiliar contact at her knee. She stiffened but didn't jump. Slowly, she opened sleepy eyes, focusing on her tail with sleepy eyes.

"Are you serious?" She said it aloud, not even meaning to. Pan gaped. Her tail had changed colors, seemingly from the power transfer, like some sort of weird side effect. At this point she questioned if she was awake.

A laugh rang from out of the shadows. A cat-like Vegeta came into the light with a grin on his face. " I thought that was the best part." He chuckled slowly, watching Pan's tail, which was now whipping and winding about in a state of agitation, the slight sheen of it bouncing off the low light. Pan grabbed it when she realized it was reacting of its own will. "This better not be my gift." She muttered and touched her tail, marveling at it's new look, and beginning to move it of her own accord. It still had a personality, though.

Vegeta watched her carefully. "Eh, it used to be muddy brown. It didn't even match your hair." He said gruffly, dismissively.

"Are you jealous Vegeta!? Your own old tail was brown!" Pan laughed, delighted and amused at him. She looked at him with wide eyes. "You wanna pet her?" She pouted her bottom lip, teasing him.

He shook his head at her antics, but walked toward her, where she was laying. Pan realized that though she had just woken up she was exhausted, and propped her chin in her hand. Vegeta stepped over her, and was then by her side.

Pan eyes widened, and she stiffened at first as his body made contact with her back. His breath was warm on her neck and his scent was covering the air like a comforting blanket.

"Vegeta?" She asked, with question in her voice.

"Get your rest…" He answered, and she heard the pause in his voice. She felt his hand at her waist and he drew her into him. She last felt his nose and her neck, settling into the space there. She felt him sigh, and her eyelids were heavy, heavy stones.

Vegeta breathed her in, and the moment was so long for him. He was beside himself at the sight of her tail, and the information that had been given to them. He began to think about the time, just how long it had truly been since he had been on earth, and this upcoming battle. He had been worried by the time it had taken Pan to come to, but the entire time her heart beat strong, and he felt that she would wake up soon. He had waited, but when he noticed the tail he couldn't help but wonder what part it would play in what was unfolding around them. He---

Vegeta was jarred from this thoughts. He looked at his wrist. Her tail was wound around his arm, the one that was around her.

He heard her exhale, and she shifted in her sleep gently.

Vegeta was still.

2 days later

-------------------------------------------------

Anathea awoke, the child beating in her belly. She ran her hand over the bulge, and took a breath to quiet herself. She had the distinct imprint of an energy similar to Pan's, but only due to biology. Her eyes took in the morning streams of light, and her mind dully grasped the implications of that energy.

'The Saiyajin…' she mused, the aura unmistakable. The swagger in it, the strength and the distinct feeling of his structure were all over it. Her people were divine at deciphering signs, tracking ki imprints and communicating over long distances. Spirit ships like Pan's however, were a stretch to them. Their abilities were more cultural born, and very Acanthian.

Anathea reached out with her mind, seeking Pan, and was startled at the impression she received. Her ki was strong, so powerful…yet it was calm, relaxed, in no way abrasive.

A tendril of thought was all it took to reach her.

'Pan?' she questioned, an echo in a limitless space.

'Anathea!' Pan's voice was elated.

'I'm glad that you are alright. You sound safe.' Ana mused aloud, feeling a little more at ease.

'Time has flown. 3 months are nothing on Vegetasei. The season flutter by. How is the baby?'

'She grows larger…im now at 5 months…' She trailed off, and began again. 'Pan, there's something I wanted to tell you. Do you remember the Saiyajin I once spoke of, the one that may have been sighted?'

'I remember. Do you have news? At first I thought it was Vegeta, but when I arrived here, it was clear he hadn't been anywhere in awhile.' Pan said, sounding certain.

'I awoke, not even a few moments ago and I knew I felt a Saiyajin ki, in my sector at least,' Ana paused. 'I knew it was Saiyajin immediately, because it reminded me of the way your energy feels. It's strange, Pan. It felt hurried.'

'Can you tell me his intentions?' Pan asked.

'No, it was too rushed, as if he was traveling very fast. Honestly Pan, if it weren't first thing in the morning, I would say that he is traveling vaguely in your direction.' Anathea finished, knowing that it was a stretch, but firm in the feeling.

'Im glad that you contacted me today, Ana. Not just to tell me this, but because something has happened, and I haven't been able to think of a good way to tell you.' Pan said. 'Yesterday, Vegeta and I were in the palace, and we were visited by spirits of the old kings…' She stopped, shaking her head in real life.

'That's a good one, Pan, but for some reason I'm really not amazed. Do you know what your ki looks like right now? A silver stop light, blinking far brighter than the specs around it. Your Vegeta, his still runs stronger, yet yours is like a neon pulse.' Ana quipped. 'I think that Saiyajin sees you. You read ki in a different way than I, and im sure that the Saiyajin has some method.'

Pan sighed. ' I can deal with that, but there's something you must know, and it involves the Raiders.'

Anatheas mental flow twitched. For Pan it was more of a train stopping at a dead hault. 'Tell me.' Anathea said.

'The visitors said they are on my Earth. I don't have your abilities, to register energy over far distances, not through space. I knew when my mother died, because her ki is linked to mine, as my mother. Out of all the lonely dreams I ever had while going through space, I never felt that the earth was in danger.' Pan's voice held bitter edges.

Anathea's mind raced back to Acantha and she was without words for some time. 'Will you go there, to try and…find them?' The words were hard to say. Anathea knew that when one was taken, there was no known way to bring them back.

Pan was resolute. 'Ana, the spirits that came told me that I would bear a gift, a gift that is supposed to fight against the Raiders. They gave us one month to find it, use it and…train. They said that it was fate, but what a fucking fate, you know? What a fucking gift.' She was bitter for not being able to know the situation on earth, guilty for still not knowing what the situation might be even now.

'I await your news, Pan.' Ana said sadly, thoughts of her homeland raging in her mind. 'I will do what I can to watch out for you. But unless your gift can guarantee my child's safety, im afraid this battle is one I cannot join, as much love as I have for you, my friend.' She cursed herself for having to say it.

Pan had already understood this. 'I know Ana…I will contact you soon.'

'Be careful.'

Pan's eyes opened and she refocused on her surroundings to see the Ouji looking right at her.

" Welcome back, Onna." He quipped. His eyes were two black disks, and his thick locks of hair moved faintly in the breeze. It was midday, and she remembered they had taken a break from sparring. In the two days since their strange visit, he had seemed overly thoughtful, always in deep in thought, even while sparring. She had demanded his focus, but for the first time, ever really, he had wanted to take a break. Now he was flipping through a book, and the peculiar sight took Pan aback. She hopped off the edge of the veranda, and as she walked toward him streams of vertical light filtered in through the pillars.

"What's this?" She asked bending down to see the book.

Vegeta skimmed the pages, yellow and folding, until it came to the desired spot. He began to read. "…This is a book of legend. It was considered quite pansyish to read it, in my day."

"So what the hell are you reading it for?" Pan asked amusedly. "Are you going metro on me?" She almost giggled but didn't want to get her ass beat.

Vegeta's look would have probably made hell freeze. He shook his head at her in retort. "Eh hehe huh, very amusing, brat. It concerns the Mata Lai. Remember? Our destiny?" He was sarcastic. "You think you have it figured out, power, world domination…then all of a sudden you have a destiny! Rubbish!" He was in a mood already, she could tell. He probably had sat there working himself up, too.

Pan sat beside him, touching shoulders. She tried to read along, but he slouched over the book, blocking her view. "Hey, don't hog it!" Pan cried, pushing him and fighting for the book.

"Dammit woman! Have you no restraint! Gokou paused more before beginning to eat than you just did." He trailed off, "….and I never even saw him chew….not once…"

Pan blew a strand of hair out of her face, looking at him for a moment. She thought it was sweet how he talked to himself but of course that was something she would never say to any live human being. She was flustered by him most of the time now, at his strength and his patience with her. She had felt his gaze at different times around the old palace, and it took all of her nerve to keep herself from stumbling, or turning away noticeably. Her tail constantly fluttered, and she felt incredibly translucent, as if her tail was fluttering like the butterflies in her belly. Inwardly, she told herself to get a grip. It was crazy how the sexual tension had grown inside her, how this man had become her immediate desire. It was as if her universe had shifted. She was aware that he did count her age, but she wondered was he seriously thinking the same things that she found running in her head? Pan watched his eyes, busily scanning the sprawling script. Had age really mellowed out Vegeta, the fierce king?

She was startled out of her musing by Vegeta's chuckling.

"And she will come in the form of an aggressive hunter, fierce, and desired by the kings of state." He read. "Ha! A fierce hunter!" He looked at Pan and the nerve he had pissed her off.

"Hey screw you Vegeta, im aggressive." Her tail sashayed behind her.

"Like hell you are." He retorted, with a snort. "Aggressive! What a ……" He trailed off with some words in Saiyago that Pan had never heard before.

"You are so damn annoying Vegeta!" She got up to go, but not before doing a quick turnaround to steal the book. He moved the book deftly away, smirking. She knew he was on to her but she just wanted to fuck with him. "You are such a child!" She prodded, with a sarcastic smirk of her own to match his. He rolled his eyes at her (which was such a human gesture that it always tickled Pan) and nestled the book into his lap again. She caught a glimpse of a picture, the figure of a female.

"Wow…"she breathed, forgetting herself and pushing into Vegeta for a spot on the ledge, He grumbled but moved over, and allowed her to look at the pages.

The picture reminded her of the hindu god with outstretched palms, because the Saiyajin in the picture was in a pose of similar type. It was a female depicted with fierce eyes and long hair. "What else does it say…" she asked, trailing off. She turned to look at him but found him watching her intently. His skin, as with hers, was tanned copper, and with just the right light she swore she saw one flicker of the darkest blue in his usually black eyes.

"It doesn't say anything about what your supposed ability is like." His eyes flicked between both of hers. "It does say a lot of shit I would have never guessed would come from my people." Pan marveled at how talkative he had become at moments, and wondered whether his statements were really getting longer, or if she just had no reason as a child to receive more than brief statements. She had always known though, when she was younger whether he was satisfied with the way she sparred, or when learning a new technique. She had only cried in front of him once, when she was 8 years old. ( ) He had squatted down, to get right at her eye level. He had come out of the gravity room just as she had run by crying. and she remembered he was wearing blue uniform. He had squatted down and did the strangest thing : he took off his gloves. At eight she had never seen him without his gloves. The act had confused her enough to calm her crying to sniffles. He grabbed her hands, covered with tears and most likely snot, brought them away from her eyes roughly and said, "Stop your crying, brat!" She had remembered the look in his eyes, fierce and angry. " Saiyajin never cry, not even if an opponent reached into their bellies, barehanded and pulled out their innards!" He let her go. "Did anyone do that to you, brat?"

She hung her head and sniffled, "No, Vegeta-sama."

"Then I better not see you cry ever again, brat. I will whip you senseless to bring out that human reaction, do you understand?"

"Yes sensei!"

" I was trying to instill a sense of honor in you." Vegeta's voice startled her again from her daydream.

"Yeah well at the time it scared the hell out of----" She stopped abruptly, realizing what he had said and that she hadn't said anything of her thoughts out loud. His eyes widened.

He backed away from her, face in a grimace.

"Vegeta, what was---" He cut her off. "Don't come near me woman…" He dropped the book. She tried to touch his arm, but he shrugged her off.

"Vegeta, I don't understand, how did you know what I was thinking?" She was startled because she could communicate to him, just like with Ana, mentally, but the images and thoughts that were conveyed were always voluntarily given, never taken unconsciously.

He looked angry, and he got up. She stood with him, grabbing both his arms and blocking his way. He went tense, as if to break her grasp and she powered up a little to hold him longer. "Don't ignore me." She was angry now.

He hissed at her, "I don't have to explain anything to you, pup. Your weak human mind wouldn't be able to grasp the implications or even appreciate the information." He sneered and the venom in his voice stung Pan worse than if he had slapped her.

She reeled back, punching him in the chin, and he retaliated by, ironically, actually slapping her. She kicked his shin and danced around his leg, then muscled for his arm. He grabbed her wrist and wrenched it behind her back, dragging her close to him in a swift, violent motion. His aura whispered around them both in a silent blue flame

His breath was hot on her neck and his voice was death. "You are nothing to me. You should have never come to his place, I was fine on my own. Destiny is a lie. Destroy your destiny. Let the earth rot; I won't go back."

She was gritting her teeth in agony at her position, and his words ran down her spine in the iciest manner. He made the motion to shove her away, but she grabbed the back of his neck and the hair there with her free hand. She was feeling uncontrollably angry. Her lips were at his face. "You once told me that Saiyajin never cry. They also never back down from a challenge, and they always get what they want." She wrenched her arm free.

"You are nothing but a watered down version of what you claim." He spat at her.

She begin to power up. "Say what you wish, Ouji." She lifted off the ground gently, preparing for flight. "But I will have what I want, and I will bring you to your knees."

Her tail was whipping behind her like a promise as she took off into the sky.

What do you think will happen next? What would you like to happen?

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	7. Here I Am

For a few moments all she felt was the wind biting her face as she sped through the air. The sharp chill of it stung her cheeks, bringing out a blush on her copper skin. She was frustrated to her bone, to her core, and sweet jesus she meant her words, though spoken hastily. How could he begin to deny...what was happening between them. She doubted herself, when she heard those words in her mind. Was there anything between them? Was she being a fucking idiot, and had she really driven herself to madness by being with him this time?

"Onna!" Vegeta's voice cut through the speed of the wind as she flew. She was surprised that he had followed her at all, it is was rather childish to take off into the air like some juvenile. She halted in the air with the quickness of one crashing into a brick wall; a dead hault. 'Don't be so eager, Pan.' She told her brain.

She whipped around to look at him, and her blood was at a boil.

The Great Prince made an uncharacteristic decision. He would follow the bitch. So he took off into the air at a pace that was unmatchable; breakneck at the very least. He was at his wits end with need, drowning in an unbearable need to communicate with her. He grit his teeth. He almost hated himself for it. The thought of dependency made him nauseous.

Was it his nature, as a Saiyajin? Was it his chemical makeup in combination with the granddaughter of his enemy that set off the explosion inside of his mind and body? Was it luck? Lust? …Was there really the possibility of fate? Was it fate that they were currently invested in?

Vegeta wasn't an idiot, and while any outsider may have thought he was denying his feelings, the Ouji wasn't denying them as much as he was inwardly beating the living shit out of them.

"Youre a fool, old man." He thought, chasing after the youngest, most undaunted piece of ass that just so happened to cross his patch of the universe. He could feel her at the edges of his consciousness, and it spooked him mildly, as he had never participated in a two way bond. At times he had felt that he was bonded to the blue haired woman, but was always uncertain. That was the cruelest part of that chapter in his life, he thought at times, having the ability to truly know your mate, to have their heart beating in your chest and then not being able to share it. Vegeta sneered at the drama of the statement, but even he was unsure of what a true bond was like, and this left him without any knowledge of how it would be between him and the girl.

The way he could feel Pan wasn't solid yet, but even in its first breath it had startled and enthralled him at the same time. It was intense, insane, and irreparably changing his mind, the way he woke up in the morning.

He questioned himself as much as he questioned anything else in the universe. Was his age a factor? How could they appear back on earth, to fight a battle? Could he really stomach fighting beside her, if they were truly inside some love affair? He grimaced, thoughts of Bulma, and his son, even Gohan came to mind. He didnt give a fuck, at his core, but he did care for her, how much trouble they would create by merely following what felt extremely natural.

The girl had turned to look at him, whipping around in the air caustically. Her sudden movement almost, almost surprised him. He could see her seething. The hair on her tail was standing up like one irritated feline. It didn't turn him on, like one would assume, but it did set his nerves aflame, with attention and some begrudging form of respect.

He looked at her, her dark complexion, her lithe frame. He tried to choose his words.

The girl blinked, watching him, and he hated himself for jumping head on into a second encounter that he had no idea of how he would handle. He didn't have the words or the certainty needed to speak them.

He began to speak, but stopped, and cursed under his breath…he couldn't believe himself.

"I've felt it more than once, more than today. Many times. When I get up in the morning, before I sleep, or, before you go to sleep. I've felt your thought brush at mine."

Vegeta forced the words out, his dark eyes slanted and weary.

Pan controlled her immediate impulse to gape at him, openmouthed. Her shoulder became uncoiled and she unconsciously leaned into him and loosed her guard. She looked at the man sideways, looked at his lips parting.

He looked so strange to her in that moment, and then it hit her that he looked mildly nervous. Unsure of himself. The pompous warrior stood before her unnerved! She waited for his words….

Vegeta watched her consider what he had said. "When we spar its all I can do not to breathe in your scent…" He moved closer to her now. Pan was still as stone. She could feel her heart pounding blood up and down through every vein in her body. She could only pray to Dende that she wasn't blushing like a child, but that maybe it was the slight chill that still made her cheeks red. Somewhere along the line she forgot to be mad at all.

The great Prince's dark eyes came to hers, with the most earnest look she had ever seen him produce. "This….thing is happening, and I can no longer…speak of it as if it isn't real." He closed the gap between them.

He saw her eyelashes, her reddened cheeks and her lips, barely parted, searching for words. He could only breathe. He hesitated, and Pan felt it. He looked into her eyes, and then with one hand, he began to take his gloves off. Pan watched him pull the leather, saw his weathered hands peek out from beneath their usual white covering. She stared at the gloves and his hands because it felt so intensely intimate to her for some reason that she could not look into his eyes, she couldn't meet his gaze. She could only watch, like a trapped bird.

He tucked the gloves into his waistband, and held out his hands to her. They were dark, some parts thick with scars. The gesture was, 'here, here I am. I am here.' All of me.

Pan looked at his face, his face so close to hers and his spread palms. She was struggling not to cry out, or even worse, let a stupid tear fall out. Vegeta could feel her becoming overwhelmed and it made him nervous.

Pan was once again, forever, that child in front of Vegeta-sama.

' I need you, Onna. Come with me. I will show you the way.'

Pan jerked up at the sound…inside her mind. His words were more than she could describe….

She reached out to take his scarred hands, but he grabbed her arms by her elbows, drew her to him and kissed her, ferociously. He bit her bottom lip, tasted her, wanted her, needed her badly.


	8. Strange How it Turns Out

Author's Note:

No one is allowed to flame me for unorthodox character pairings. This is an AU so I can basically do what I need to do, I have these liberties, but hopefully you will enjoy. I need input about this chapter, please review, tell me any thoughts you had as you read this chapter... thank you!

Love,

Kuree

He had been traveling for a week. The planets that he passed were usually nothing more than swirling balls of gas, and the ones with viewable structures seemed primitive; no satellites or any sign that whoever inhabited the planet was aware of a way to travel in space.

He was old; not 50 or anything like that, he was 30, but he still had a sense of growing older. Earth was in a state of hell, and though he wanted nothing more than to relax, he had no choice but to try and fight. That's why he left. He was helping the fight by finding his father.

Trunks sighed gloomily, as he completed another set of one handed pushups. If Bulma would have seen him, she would have told him he looked just like his father, before the Androids had come. About the way she had watched him when she was younger, and their whole love affair. He grimaced thinking of his mother, his sweet, bitchy, brilliant mom, waiting at home with Gohan, Bra, Goten, Chichi and the rest. He remembered her words, as she looked out the door towards the sky, smoking a cigarette. The habit he begged her to stop.

"He's out there, Trunks. Somewhere." She had taken an unsteady drag of the damned thing, and turned to look back at him, her blue eyes just as blue as ever. "He will fight you, but…please…bring him back." She crushed the cigarette, and wrung tired hands while shifting on her feet. "We need him, son. I don't think the old earth can do it, without him…"

He had only listened to her, feeling her heartbreak. He had never been sure of what had happened between her and his father. It was something that even their family friends never brought up or talked about. Bulma's age had begin to show, not that she wasn't beautiful, but she was only human. Human. Trunks had always been sensitive to the fact that his father wasn't human. The same nature beat inside his own blood. Vegeta would outlive her by 50, possibly 60 years. As it had…progressed, no one but he and Bra had noticed anything out of the ordinary. Trunks wasn't sure if it was watching Bulma grow older, or himself and his sister grow into adults that might have begin to eat at Vegeta. He had never been particularily close with his father. Though they had their moments, Vegeta had always been distant. His father had become more detached, almost like a shadow. Bulma had gotten thinner, seemingly powerless to what was affecting them. Their silence grew like a sore, and it was the open wound that made their household like a funeral service. It was like a huge crack, with thousands of hairline cracks splitting off of it.

And so it passed, that people were witness to their fights, but they knew the Ouji-Heiress relationship had always been a tumultuous one. And so to the eyes of the world and even their closest friends, it was another fight, another day. One day, Bulma and Vegeta ran out of days…and Vegeta took off into space. Just like that.

On Earth Bulma sneezed, and then looked out the window…She found herself like this sometimes, when she felt wistful, or even agitated. She knew it was the view of the gravity room that always made her pause, but couldn't help it. She smiled a bitter smile, thinking that a damn good portion of her life she had stared out at that motherfucker, either longing for or cursing the man inside.

She wrapped her arms around herself.

The woman was still beautiful. Even though her body knew the years her face still shone with a natural glow, and she hadn't added any extra weight to her frame. Sure, the state of the earth made her show some of the most recent years, but she looked youngish, and healthy.

"Who can save us now?" she whispered, barely using breath, when two arms encircled her waist.

"Are you okay?" the man nuzzled into her neck, and she found herself instantly relax. Gohan looked out the pane glass window at the grounds of capsule corporation with her, sweeping the long manicured lawn all the way down to the treeline of a vast forest that they owned as well. Her breathed against her neck, and she was comforted.

That's when they smelled the smell that had come to haunt them all, and make them live nightmares. At first she only felt Gohan flinch a little; that's how bad it was, the smell knocked you off your feet sometimes. His sensitive sense of smell had caught on to it long before she had, but it physically made him want to be sick. Bulma wrinkled her nose. "God, not another one…" She grimaced, eyes scanning the compound quickly.

"There." Gohan pointed to the west end, where one of them had ran into the electric fence and was shaking grotesquely as the high voltage fried its already decaying flesh. Bulma didn't recoil, and barely had to fight off any gag reflex. They had become accustomed to it.

The being shook inhumanly, and was separated from the fencing for one moment. It looked around itself, its immediate surroundings…and then proceeded to the fence, again, as if not remembering the horrible experience it had just went through. Bulma had watched this phenomenon a thousand times…it seemed that not all of them were intelligent. It was like some were simply…wanderers. Made into these…demons, and then left to roam the earth.

Bulma had seen what they could do in groups sometimes. It was like their attacks were orchestrated, actually planned. It was strange how as a cooperative they displayed strength, yet others seemed to have no instruction. It was like something else all together was controlling their bodies.

She stared again as the shell of some unfortunate human was rocketed by the high streams of electricity. "Gohan, could you---"

"Yeah." Gohan answered, cutting her off while moving to open the window.

He pointed a ki blast at the beings head, and its heart, simultaneously. The energy sped from his fingertips powerfully and quickly.

The thing froze, as it was knocked off the fence, and then crumpled as its head and heart were evaporated by Gohans ki. Gohan made sure it didn't start reanimating itself, then closed the windows, and the blinds.

"Bulma, tomorrow I will go put up all of the improved ki blast checkpoints…Once we have them set up around the compound we should be able to stop more episodes like this."

Bulma nodded her head. The robots she had designed were about the size of a security camera, stationary, but powerful enough to take out one of the beings if shot repeatedly, or at least delay a whole fucking crowd of them.

"Did you see how easy that one went down?" She looked up at Gohan, eyes calculating.

The man with the usually dark, welcoming eyes closed them, thinking. "It was as if that one was one of the roamers." He said, looking back at her and taking her expression to mean she was on the same train of thought.

She watched his eyes turn black, and she knew he was thinking about Videl. One of the first taken. Videl had seen one of them, and became startled. Having fighting experience she approached it. It was in the form of a child. She knew something had been horribly wrong, and was trying to help the "child."

Gohan heard her scream, and had used his father's instant transmission to appear where she was…Only there was nothing. He had almost disintegrated the city around him when he realized that they had taken her, and Trunks had barely been able to make it through the immensity of his aura, much less calm him down. The tectonic plates in the area had moved after Gohan's power had been released.

Bulma couldn't handle going further with those thoughts. What they even knew of Videl's last moments had been reported to them by Dende, who they had been spending a lot more contact with recently. The young Namek (he would always be young to Bulma) had a heavy heart, but always told them of areas more devastated than others, when the next senzu batch would be ready, and anything else that would help them all protect the old earth.

She watched Gohan for a moment, then embraced him. The man returned her embrace without a second thought. "I missed you today…" She said carefully, not wanting to seem too clingy. It had been a long time since Videl had been takin, though she was sensitive to the fact that he was younger than her and they had both been in long relationships. It had been 8 years since anyone had heard from Vegeta, including her, and almost three since Videl was taken. It had been hard for all of them, but Gohan had been overwhelmed, not having even his daughter there with him. Pan was another that no one had seen in years.

He had come to her hysterical, probably a year after she died, and he had ravaged her, not the other way around. She had let him, knowing his pain, but also feeling…something else, tucked away in him, reserved. He was strong and powerful, but gentle with her, appreciative of her.

"I missed you too, baby. It was bad in the city today. The ki checkpoints were easy to situate, though. I stayed awhile to make sure they would be able to register the difference between human ki signatures and the one of theirs, and it all went smoothly." He rubbed her hand inside his, a tiny gesture of affection. She sensed he was getting sheepish, and sure enough a blush appeared on his face. "You know, the entire time I was putting those things up, I couldn't help but to marvel at them. The schematics are truly excellent…"

Bulma blushed, for the first time in her laugh having a counterpart that was intelligent in the same ways she was, that could read her blueprints, exchange ideas with her, and really appreciate her hard work on her projects. She grinned up at him, "Thanks baby that's really sweet of you." She giggled as he swooped her up in his arms. He went to the couch where he plopped down, and then she sat on top of him, straddling him. She looked at him with her head propped in her hands.

He looked at her for one moment, his big chocolate eyes taking her all in. His voice was low and breathy as he told her, "…You know, I will always think you are beautiful, Bulma Briefs…you were always this electric symbol of beauty for me, my whole life. I didn't even know I felt that way until I was about 20, and I began to read about your work. I read everything I could get my hands on, your theory, your experiments, reviews from all the scientific journals…:"He stopped, looking at her sheepishly, and sadly. "Are you happy, with me, here and now?"

Bulma looked at him. "Strange how it turns out that way, isn't it?" She smiled at him softly, and he kissed her lips.

Back in space, Trunks finished his pushups and looked around his ship. He was bored, utterly bored. He checked all meters and gauges and when he felt content that Apollo 11 wasn't imminent, he reached out with his mind for his father's ki. It was a physically challenging act. Navigating this way was even crazier. His mother had written a computer program to pinpoint a ki signal into the ships navigation system, but it had to be within range first…He was flying blind in limitless space.

Vegeta's ki signature was fuzzy in his mind, like a dull light, miles upon miles away. He wondered if his father could feel him looking for his ki. It was likely that because of the distance he had no idea. Trunks realized that he could be involved in any situation that man could possibly think up; war, something criminal, or worse, crazy and alone. He didn't really think of the last one seriously, but with his father he had comes to terms with the fact that anything he wanted to do, he would do, regardless of any obstacle. That left the field of possibilities as wide as the universe.

Trunks began to prepare himself a bite to eat and, a little bit cynically, thought about how long this might take him. He had left his mother in the safety of Gohan. Bra would be fine too, seeing as how she was rarely out of Goten's sight. (Trunks had been rather perturbed at that development.) He hadn't had a problem with Gohan and his mother, though. He had been surprised, sure, not shocked. He could see how they were good medicine for each other. He knew that she had always craved affection that Vegeta the stone prince couldn't give her. He chuckled darkly. Maybe the Briefs were just destined to hook up with Sons…

All of their closest friends had moved into Capsule Corporation, and 18, Piccolo, Tien and Chouzou worked daily, scouting out areas that were being taken by the beings. It was strange how no one really knew where the beings went at night. It was too dangerous to try and follow them, and until they could bring back Vegeta, taking them on was ridiculous.

Trunks was pissed at that thought, knowing that by himself, he was no Goku. The power housed in a cooperative of those things was more immense than anything they had previously dealt with. It was as if the ki was old, horrifically ancient, and sickeningly powerful. They were regenerative, seemed to multiply, and their hosts were brutal. The earth ran thick with blood. Capsule Corporation was like a light to moths. Trunks shivered. He thought that some of them were capable of intelligence, like they knew that powerful energy emanated from the building. They left the CC untouched, when the rest of the planet was given no mercy. Sure, the building had been attacked before, but nothing like around the rest of the world. It was like they were waiting, getting stronger, before they would pick a fight with the residents inside the compound.

Trunks ate his sandwich in two chops, mind coursing with images, thoughts, and plans for the present.

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	9. Meet Me in Outerspace

Meet me in outerspace

We could spend the night, watch the earth come up

I've grown tired of that place, wont you come with me

We could start again

I will hold you close, If your afraid of heights

I need you to see this place, It might be the only way

That I can show you how, it feels to be inside of you

How do you it, make me feel like I do?

Oh, You are stellar…

"Stellar" by Incubus

Pan eyed him then, in all his glory. His dark hair was moving slightly in the wind, as they were still several hundred feet in the air. She knew his body, the way he moved, the way he smelled, one hundred tiny details that she longed to know in full. It had only been sideways glances until now. She hadn't known a man in a long time…but to know the Saiyajin prince was an entirely different book all together.

She pressed her mouth to his roughly and felt him respond immediately. It took her breath away, his need and his eagerness to express it to her not just on a sexual level. He knew what he was doing. His hand slipped to the small of her back, supporting her, but it drove her wild. It was intimate without being sexual, it was a caress, a promise. He looked into her eyes and shoved her to him.

The sight of the tops of her breasts pushed up, creamy white and un-tanned, peeking out of her top made him want to take her right there. He sucked on her slightly parted lip, and began to peel off her pants. She made no move to stop him, and wove her fingers through the hair at the back of his neck. She pulled, jerking his face back to hers and he bared his teeth, loving it. Then he took her swollen lips for his own.

His hands traveled over the curve of her ass, the round slope of her thighs. He felt the muscle there and was thrilled at the prospect of having those thighs wrapped around him, not holding back. He found her pussy with his calloused fingers, and she moaned against his neck as it slid over her clit.

"Ah, woman…" He spoke tenderly as he felt her wetness, and she heard his soft murmur. She began pulling at his waistband, and feeling at the cut indentions at his hips. The fluttering of her fingertips was making him think only of her taste, her smell, her eyes and lips, and the two of them at the edge of the planet, the end of the world, the last day on earth.

Vegeta peeled off his shirt, the corded muscle rippling beneath his skin with the movement. She knew his body in a history of sideward glances, a thousand shirtless sparring sessions when the dew was still on the grass. She breathed heavily. Her prince, she would finally know him. She caught his nipple with her teeth, and gave him sweet touches of her mouth all the way to the last abdominal muscle. His belly was smooth and defined. He was unchecked primal machinery, his body was clockwork, and she loved it.

With deft hands she found his manhood. He let his eyes slip closed at the joy of it as she caressed him. He felt her tongue at his tip, and opened his eyes in time to see her take him inside her mouth. He marveled at how sweet she looked sucking his dick.

He pulled her up, and ripped off her shirt, just like that. She hissed at the sudden action, but not violently. It was turning her on, extremely. She powered up to Super Saiyajin and swam in the look of Vegeta's eyes, as he realized her intent. He followed suit, but went Super Saiyajin 2. He had never been at such a heightened state doing anything intimate. The raw unbridled power swept around them both, making the air electric.

He pulled her to him, wrapping her legs around him. He grasped her bottom with a firm grip, and he inhaled sharply when she rocked her hips into his, his dick sliding over the sweet spot between her legs. The swell of her breasts, the curve of his hips, everything down to the dip at her collarbone was begging for his mouth. He growled as she raked his back and shoulders with her nails, expressing her need.

"You'll be the death of me, woman." He whispered hoarsely against her exposed neck, and took her earlobe into his mouth. Pan blushed at his voice against her, the low intimacy of it, and once again gripped the nape of his neck. She knew he liked that.

With one last look into her eyes, he moved her over his dick. She held on to his neck, and he supported her by holding her hips. Pan looked around at the Saiyajin twilight, the endless land around them, and the grounds of Vegeta-sei, everything spread out beneath them like tiny pinpoints. The breeze made goosebumps raise up on her flesh. Her nipples were two pink mounds. Her senses were all awake, acute. The power coursing through them both was making everything more vibrant. She loved the feel of being inside his aura. It was sparring mixed with the sounds of lovers, and as she looked at him she wondered if he felt it to. His scent was making her drunk.

She was all his, hundred of feet in the air, in his arms. He held HER. She was at his mercy.

His head was at her neck as he pushed into her. She moved her hips against him, feeling him enter her in one swift moment. She cried out, and bit her bottom lip. He moved in and out of her, slowly like a caress, and each moment of their rhythm was better than the last.

She gave up on being modest, and was soon bucking her hips, begging, writhing against him. She could feel the grip of his hands becoming more intense. She arched her back and let him speed up.

Vegeta slid his hands over her exposed stomach, watching the whiteness of her breasts bounce with his movements. Her nipples were swollen, her eyes were shut, and she was a goddess. Was she even aware? Was she aware of the sweet feeling of her tight opening, gripping him in a way no one else could?

He slid his finger to her clit as he pounded into her, loving her little moans, her pleas. She was fluid movement, her hips demanding more, fitting him like a glove. He could feel her stress building, the honey of her pussy making their dance all the more intoxicating.

"On this day I will make you mine…" he breathed into her neck, softly in Saiyajin. She caught his words, words spoken between lovers.

She screamed as he bit into her neck, her power shifting, and she exploded into Super Saiyajin two. Startled, and overcome with emotion, he rocked into her, fingers tight of her hips, as far as he could go. He could feel the muscles of her gripping him, singing a song of release, comfort, infinite joy, closeness and seduction. Her orgasm was a wave of intensity. He felt every second of her. Her eyebrows were knotted up, her lips partially pouted as the release at level two coursed through her.

"_There's something about the look in your eyes  
Something I noticed when the light was just right…"_

The sweetness of her look and the way she folded into him, after coming, was enough. He wrapped his arms around her, eyes wide, and prayed to god that she couldn't see his expression as he came. The great prince's eyes were wide open, his mouth was open, he was…overcome again. He was a young man again, experiencing the first trembling touches between young lovers…she was, realigning the stars of his past.

_"It reminded me twice that I was alive  
And it reminded me that you're so worth the fight…"_

Her breath was soft heat at his neck. She slipped her lips over his skin, and bit down. He hissed at her gesture, that she returned his bite. The act gave him an extreme amount of carnal pleasure. Did she know the full extent of her actions? How her small act drove him wild with want, even still?

He was brought down by her. She was land and he was a drowning man.

"_My biggest fear will be the rescue of me  
Strange how it turns out that way, yeah…."_

"Echo" by Incubus

She laid her head on his neck then, content, the both of them high above the earth below.

He ascended slowly, still in level two, feeling like a predator, a king and a hunter. He carried his woman, his Pan like the pieta almost, rubbing his fingers at the soft slope under her knee, the other at the crook of her elbow.

He took her inside the palace, nothing but moonlight sliding through the high columns, the crystallized mural above them glinting in the low light.

He set her down then, in his own bed, and nuzzled against her. He was a thousand small gestures praising her in all the ways he knew how. His hands lingered on her belly, her wrists, the rise of her breasts, anything, everything.

Vegeta ran his hands along the length of her long legs, moved them apart slowly, and his tongue found her opening. She closed her eyes and only knew his touch.

He lapped at her clit lovingly and with devotion, until she came hoarsely, trembling against him. The night came like a velvet blanket around them both, and Vegeta slept curled around his woman far past the rise of dawn the next morning.

Okay guys, now, don't break my heart, please review. This chapter was put out with love! I really love those two incubus songs and you should totally download them if her you have never heard of them. They inspired me with this chapter. Im not really one for song fics, but I used them here for…thoughts kind of, it tells their story rather well I think…hopefully not too mushy.

But anyway like I said, don't break my heart. This is for all of my faithful readers along the years and the new ones that have shown the love as well.

Hope this wasn't too graphic. ;)

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